American Sniper

American Sniper: Book Review by Judson U

American Sniper is an engaging memoir of the American hero’s life, Chris Kyle, and how he achieved the most confirmed kills out of any other American snipers. This book begins in Kyle’s home state, Texas, where Kyle is a rodeo cowboy. In 1997, Kyle decided he wanted to quit his rodeo job and go fight for his country as a Navy SEAL. Shortly afterwards, Kyle is sent off to training. He describes the strenuous BUD/S training of running miles upon miles or sitting in cold ocean water for hours on end. Finally, after almost a year of training, Kyle was sent off to Iraq with SEAL Team 3. During his first tour, Kyle was not a sniper, but a gunner for his team. However, when returning to his next tour, he had worked to become a SEAL sniper and from then on out he became the deadliest US sniper in history.     

When Chris Kyle was writing this book, he included little entries his wife wrote about him. Reading these was one of my favorite parts of the book; they showed how Chris would feel about their relationship and how Taya would feel about it. This added depth to the book and made me want to keep reading. Another thing I really enjoyed was how the entire book was written in little stories about which city they were in. This gave me lots of places to stop which helped me read this story because it’s hard for me to read for hours on end without stopping. With this type of layout, I feel as though it helped me to have a deeper understanding of what was happening in the story. Additionally, I could reflect on what had just happened.

Overall, I believe this was a very well written book and it kept my interest. However, for me personally, the first two chapters were slow. I didn’t really find much interest in reading about his life as a rodeo cowboy. Despite this fact, if you can get past these first two chapters then the book becomes a thrilling adventure of Chris Kyle’s military career. I would recommend this book to anyone. I think everyone would find something interesting and/or enjoyable in his memoir. There should be no doubt in your mind about reading this story of a true American hero.